Maine Yankee in Miami;

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MaineYankee
It was an interest in statistics that led
Lawrence M. Walsh to accounting when
he entered the University of Notre Dame
in 1937. It was an instinctive grasp of the
importance of human relationships that
influenced his career within Haskins &
Sells and led to his present post as
partner in charge of the Miami office.
Born in Portland, Maine ("My father was a
railroad man who observed the work
ethic"), Larry Walsh is a man of strong
opinions on a broad range of topics,
opinions based solidly on professional
expertise and a recognition that the most
effective accountant is one who can work
as well with people as with numbers.
In the late 1930s the number of colleges
and universities offering majors in
accounting was limited, and H&S
recruiting efforts focused on the few
schools that graduated accountants with
a high level of training. One of the best of
these was Notre Dame which, in just the
four years during which Larry Walsh
attended, was alma mater to EO partners
Tom Hogan and Phil Sandmaier, San
Francisco PIC Tom Graves, and Detroit
PIC Lou MacKenzie. In fact Lou, Larry,
and now-deceased partners Fred
Voglewede (Mexico City) and Bill Sturm
(Memphis) were all members of the class
of 1941 at Notre Dame.
Offered a position with H&S in his senior
year, Larry accepted and in July of 1941
came east for a year's training period,
split between classroom work and
assignments in the New York office report
department. With his New England
background, he had set his sights on a
transfer to Boston at the end of the year.
Like millions of other Americans, Larry
found his plans changed and future
affected by the outbreak of the Second
World War. Because the military services
were calling up large numbers of
draftees, H&S offices across the country
found themselves shorthanded. Four
months after Larry started with the Firm,
Cincinnati issued an emergency call for a
staff accountant. Lured by the office's
outstanding reputation as a training
ground for new accountants, Larry
volunteered and was accepted for the
position.
"We really had to produce in those days,"
he recalls. "There was too much work and
too few people." After only a year with the
Firm, Larry found himself the accountant
in charge on several engagements."In
charge in those days meant just that," he
said. "After I finished field work on an
engagement, I often came back to the
office and typed the reports." The war
finally caught up with him three years
after his arrival in Cincinnati. Drafted into
the Army, Sergeant Walsh spent the next
two years training infantry recruits.
During his years in Cincinnati (he
rejoined that office after discharge), Larry
found many of his ideas on the role of the
CPA as a man as well as an accountant
coming into sharp focus under the
influence of several of the partners and
managers. "I was fortunate to have had a
'teacher-student' relationship in the
fullest sense with such men as Charlie
Swormstedt, Rudy Englert and Elmer
Beamer... but to single out just a few
would be unfair... it was really a fine
office!"
It was in 1954 that Larry Walsh, then a
manager, was asked by partner John
Queenan to prepare and deliver a talk on
personnel matters at a managers
meeting. That talk proved a turning point
in Larry's career. Shortly thereafter Mr.
Queenan asked Larry to transfer to
Executive Office as national personnel
director, a position he accepted. In June
of 1955, Larry Walsh was admitted to
partnership in the Firm and became the
first partner to carry the title of National
Personnel Director.
Charged with developing and
implementing an effective personnel
program for the Firm, Larry was not
overly burdened by any personnel
structure he inherited—it was mostly a
case of starting from scratch. During the
next five years, with his responsibilities
including recruiting, training, salary and
personnel policies, Larry began
implementing broad programs which
formed the base of the personnel
practices and policies employed today by
the Firm.
'In establishing priorities," Larry
remembers, "our first objective was to
enhance both the number and quality of
our staff." Grade standing was a prime
consideration to H&S recruiters. "We
wanted the best, and grade standing was
the most objective criterion for selecting
those we thought had the mental capacity
to succeed in the profession."
Larry recognized, however, that it was
just as important to attempt to gauge how
well a student would be able to work with
clients and his fellows at H&S. "We
looked for accountants whose
background revealed an understanding of
the service concept, who were articulate,
who could relate well to other people."
Most of the criteria originally developed
by Larry Walsh and those who worked
with him eventually became formalized
into the same points used today to
evaluate those being considered for
promotion to manager or for admission to
the Firm as partner. His early efforts were
directed toward generating more
enthusiasm within the Firm for recruiting,
highlighting its importance so it would be
considered a key function at every
practice office.
He also began developing a program that
would systematically determine the
techniques most effective for college
recruiting, including college relations,
student contact and methods for
presenting the image of the professional
CPA most effectively to the colleges. It
was in this period that Larry coordinated
preparation of the first recruiting
brochure used by the Firm. "Our
recruiting brochure was the second
produced by any of the Big Eight firms
and was an important factor in
strengthening our whole recruiting
program," he said. To supplement the
recruiting brochure used on campus, a
recruiting manual was prepared for use
within the Firm covering such topics as
interview techniques, how to present
effectively the opportunities available
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